SUPER CITY
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: a super hero au in which the villain and hero communities are brought together by the attempted assassination of the one person in the city who should have been off limits. Who would do such a thing? Why? (some body horror)


SUPER CITY

Edgar Vargas was pouring himself a cup of coffee from the communal coffee maker in the break room when the silent alarm started flashing over the doorway. He gave a deep sigh and wiped the "10" from the hanging whiteboard with his elbow, so that now it read It Has Been 0 Days Since Our Last Bullshit. He'd just finished shaking his sleeve back down over his wrist when the teller threw open the break room door, panting.

"Edgar," she said, "we need you out front!"

There wasn't even any sugar in his coffee yet. "Deb, you don't need me. You just need to wait for the police or the capes to show up, whichever gets here first."

Her teeth clicked together. "It's Nny's gang," she said.

Edgar looked down at his coffee, up at her, and then shoved a handful of sugar packets into his pocket. "Alright," he said. "Show me out."

Out in the main lobby of the bank, people were scattered across the floor, hands over their heads, a few of the weaker constituted ones whimpering or praying. Edgar skirts them on his way to the commotion at the tellers, stirring his coffee. Johnny is shouting at someone behind the bulletproof glass, gesturing sharply with something wickedly pointed, possibly a scimitar, while five of his black-suited regulars keep an eye on the cowering crowd.

Tess sees Edgar first, as she flips through a series of pages on her clipboard. She gives him a knowing sardonic look and then taps Johnny on the shoulder. He whirls, sword swiping through the air where her head was a moment before, as she ducks easily out of the way. He spots Edgar. He lights up.

"Hello Nny," Edgar says, giving a little wave. "What are we trying to buy today?"

Tess taps her brass knuckles against the clipboard. "You know we can't tell you that Edgar. When the police take you in for questioning–"

"Dirty bomb," Nny says brightly, leaving the sighing Tess behind him as he trots over. Unlike Tess, who is fastidious about her little domino mask and her identity–Edgar has been polite enough not to mention that he already knows, they do shop at the same Krogers and she has a very distinctive voice–Johnny is always one bare face and an itchy trigger finger from disaster. Edgar is given to understand he doesn't really leave his lair except for the express purpose of enacting mayhem.

Nny lives solely for wiping Santa Carla right off the map, the bigger and uglier the splatter pattern the better, although whether that comes from a real devotion to the cause or just a lack of other interests is anybody's guess. He certainly allows himself to be distracted easily enough.

"I need at least a grand to get a hold of the really nasty stuff," Nny says, "but these cretins won't hand over the cash, which is extremely inconsiderate of them."

When Nny first started coming out into daylight, with his manic monologues and devastating weapons, for a month or so there everyone in Santa Carla really thought they were going to die.

"They're just doing their jobs," Edgar points out mildly.

"I know," Nny says, stomping his boot against the marble floor, "but they could at least have the decency to come out here so I could get a hostage. Speaking of which–you don't mind, do you?"

"Go ahead."

"Thanks!" Nny says, and in a flash he's behind Edgar's back, the curved blade of his long sword hovering over Edgar's throat. Edgar balances the coffee carefully as Nny yanks his free arm tight behind his back. "I really didn't wanna have to blow up your bank. I know how much you like it."

Johnny's gang, consisting of two long term crewmates and a revolving door of dumb muscle, comes by the bank at least once every couple of months, and has done for a couple years. There are other banks in town, but they never hit any of those, which leads Edgar to suspect that they come here specifically to see him. It's a bit sweet, although he'd get more work done if he wasn't been held hostage every couple of days. Last week he went out to pick up milk from the corner store and ended up in the middle of a showdown with the Doughboy gang and it goes without saying which pedestrian they decided to drag into their getaway car. He missed dinner and everything. They did let him have some of their toast, though.

He doesn't know what it is about him that makes this happen. It's not like he goes looking for it. He always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The knife at his throat nicks him as Nny leans past him and shouts, very much in his ear, "Alright you putrescent boils on the zitty face of capitalism, let's try this again! I wanna make it to the ice cream shop before they close!"

Edgar gives the guys behind the glass a reassuring smile, and they slink back, unlocking their drawers. They've all bought a fair amount of time together, at this point it's really up to the capes and the cops to pick up the slack.

He gives the room another look over, as his coworkers fumble to comply. "Where's Mmy?" he asks. "It's unusually quiet today."

He can actually hear Nny grinding his teeth, which is a bad thing to hear when you have a knife at your throat.

"He's on lookout," Nny tells him, "because he got his disgusting verminous bloody hands all over my NICE JACKET!"

Edgar winced.

"Anyway!" Nny said, brightening instantaneously. "We're gonna get some ice cream after we're done here, you wanna come along? I can have one of the idiots hold a knife on you if you're worried about being an accomplice."

On the one hand, some cookie dough ice cream did sound pretty good. "Sorry Nny," he said, "I can't today. I'm already behind on everything after that incident with the Doughboys."

"Shit. Those uppity fuckers. They didn't do anything nasty to you did they? 'Cause I brought them into this world and I wouldn't fucking mind taking them out of it."

Edgar doesn't really understand how that's possible and, furthermore, would rather not find out. He starts to reassure Nny that he is perfectly unharmed when a dull whumph from the other side of the window startles him. He turns his head, just in time to see the window blown in by the force of a human being thrown bodily through it–a deadly rain of glittering glass and the meteoric body in flight overhead–

Mmy hits the floor and skids to a stop at Edgar's feet, a mess of blood and fishnets and shining buckles. He uncurls and blinks up into the light with his bare face and smeared eyeliner, the long knife in his hand not yet bloodied.

"Oh," he says, flashing a 100 watt smile, "Edgar! Hey! Are you coming for ice cream?"

"Jimmy!" Tess shouts from across the floor, "Who's out there!"

Jimmy screws up his face. "Oh," he says. "It's Durga."

Edgar hears Tess say Shit at the same time that the knife completely disappears from his throat. He has just enough time to duck behind one of the pillars before a motorcycle tears out what remains of the window and crashes in a mangled heap across the marble, tearing deep grooves in the stone.

"My bike!" Mmy whines, although nobody is listening.

Durga comes striding through the window, glass scattering under her feet, and leaps down onto the floor. Her long coat sweeps out around her as she lifts herself from her crouch. She fixes the full incendiary power of her glare on Nny, who is bouncing on his heels in anticipation.

She is just as terrifyingly intense as always.

"You assholes caught me at a really bad time," she says. The skull shape of her half-mask is almost as white as her skin. She spares a finger wiggle as she adds, tiredly, "Hey Edgar."

"What a pleasant surprise!" Nny says, and he drops the scimitar, riffling around in the lining of his own coat for something, pulling pockets open and peering down into them. "I thought it was going to be one of those philistines on the police force. You're looking stunning, by the way, have you bulked up?"

"Johnny you piece of shit," she says, "compliment me one more time and I'll rip your tongue out."

"It would be my pleasure. Ah!" From the shadows of his coat, where it absolutely should not have fit, Nny draws out the wicked curve of a sickle. "I haven't seen you since, um. Well god damn, there goes my fucking memory. How are you though?"

Devi reaches a hand behind her neck, head tilting with a snap, rolling her shoulders as she draws out, knot by knot, the long bloody whip of vertebra and shining cartilage. It hits the ground like a snake, heavy and sinuous, a deadly thing to hold in your hands. As it always does when he's unlucky enough to witness the hero making a mess of her own body, Edgar's stomach churns.

"These are not," she says, "good times to be around me."

Nny nods, sympathetically. "Well then the last thing you need is me trying to make small talk with you," he says, and flicks the blade of the sickle. "Let's just try to kill each other, how about that?"

"You read my mind," she says, and leaps across the floor.

At this point, Edgar has to look away. He gets queasy every time he sees the two of them going at it–the things that she pulls out of her own skeleton, good god, and the way that Nny knits back together after he's been split down to the kidneys on one of those wicked bones? It's not something a man should have to see more than once in his life.

In the crashing and shrieking and clatter of edge against stone, Edgar is forgotten enough that he can retreat to the far wall and finish off his cooling coffee. After a moment, like a slug moving his way through his own trail of blood, Mmy pulls himself over and props himself up against the same wall, watching the showdown with rapturous delight.

The things Mmy finds entertaining–well, there has to be a reason he picked the career he did.

"Isn't he something?" Mmy says, the side of his mouth pressed to the black hilt of his knife. "Damn, look at him go. Now that's a real doomsday device."

Edgar sips his coffee. He thinks what he can hear Johnny shouting is some kind of a compliment, although if that's the case then there's something to be said for not talking out loud about how beautiful a woman's bones are.

"They used to date, didn't they?" he says, ignoring the rain of fingers that bounce off the marble several feet away. He doesn't want to know whose they are.

Jimmy wrinkles his nose. "I dunno," he says. "Nny doesn't tell me stuff like that."

For a second the narrow slant of Mmy's eyes takes on a volatile cast, a chemical dangerous when shaken, but then it's gone as soon as it appeared. He grins against the nylon handle.

"Anyway, all that shit's in the past! Now he's got us."

Edgar glances sidelong at the villain. He's not sure what us entails, but he doubts Nny would be so quick to agree.

It's just another bothersome tuesday, a bad news day for the janitors who have to clean up the blood and fingers, but nothing Edgar hasn't seen a dozen times before. He is already thinking about the errands he needs to run after work, if he can manage to avoid getting caught up in this super business twice in one day, and the toner that needs replacing–and basically he is not worried about any of it, except as far as keeping his clothes clean goes, which is why when the shot lands, he never sees it coming.

It hits him like lightning, in the space between one breath and the next, in the space between one rib and the next.

The last thing he knows for a long time is that sound of his own startled breath, not enough time even to wonder, as he will wonder–why me, of all people?


End file.
